Transcripts For CSPAN2 Jamie Metzl Hacking Darwin 20240713 :

Welcome you to this global event celebrating the release of the highly revised paperback which means if youve got the hardback by this one too because youre going to want to know whats been changed. Its the addition of jamie metzls highly acclaimed and bestselling book hacking darwin genetic engineering and the future. Until recently a successful book launch involved people and some bad wine perhaps. But now you can eat your favorite food from your refrigerator, your beverage of choice and so this is a lot better and yes, by the way, this is also being carried by cspan welcome everybody from cspan as well. These are unprecedented times and they are unsettling times but theres also some promise in these times if we get our act together. As cosponsors of this great event, this is a time when you can move things. A classic moment in history where things can be shaped for ill or good. We at the Atlantic Council are focused on the good. We have found in our four weeks of telework that its not really social distance, its geographic distance. We galvanized our Global Community and created more social interaction and closeness even at this geographic distance cause we are all galvanized by our times. We are a community of very big thinkers and one of the biggest thinkers of them all is the person that we come to celebrate tonight and join in global conversation. We at the Atlantic Council are concerned with covid19 for sure but we are looking at it for the prism of our mission which is working with friends and allies to shape the future, looking at major power competition, looking at the contest between democracy and auto accident autocracy, looking at the future of the global system, looking importantly climate change, migration, resilience factors and how do we Harness Technology for good . Thats a huge import for the Atlantic Council chart with our newly launched tech center and in addition to getting an Atlantic Council senior fellow and jamie metzl has a lot of titles but the Atlantic Council senior fellow, hes done a few other things as well. Hes a leading technology and healthcare futurist and geopolitical expert. A Science Fiction novelist, faculty member of Singularity Universitys exponential medicine and a member of the human genome project consortium. Last year, he was appointed to the World Health Organizations Expert Advisory Committee onhuman genome editing. Jamie previously served in the Us National Security council, state department and Senate Foreign Relations Committee with the United Nations incambodia. Times i think is done so many things there must be three or four of them i try to keep up with them, bicycle riding and other things and this hasnt worked for me. Hes also regular commentator on the nn and other major media. Hacking darwin is jamies fifth book and since it came back in hardback the reviews have been stellar. And the r says that jamie metzl writes with great clarity and a sense of urgency that we should all take to heart. Nature says that jamie metzl has a knack for scientific and moral complexities and for seeingthe big picture. Cnn says quote, if you could only read one book on the future of our species, if you can read five books, read all of jamies books. You get the point. If you havent already read hacking darwin, you should and if you dont want to read it, at least by. But this is my bit for you, you have a deal right now that youre not going to get another time so this is a little bit like telemarketing here you go , i dont get a cut of this, i want you to know this. Source books is making hacking darwin available today only for 4. 95, a third of the regular price. 4. 95. Before asking jamie to speak i want to tell you just a little bit about the flow of events and introduce you to the other special guests. After jamie speaks for 10 minutes he will invite George Church to do the same. As many of you know, george is one of the worlds greatest rightists. We promise you as backdrop is not live, it is a safe backdrop. Georges professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and professor of Health Sciences and technology at harvard and at the Massachusetts Institute of technology. Director of the Us Department of Technology Center and the director of the National Institutes of center of x excellence in genomic scientists and he leads a Synthetic Biology of licenses where he oversees the directed evolution of molecules , polymers and whole genomes to create new tools with applications in Regenerative Medicine and bio production of chemicals. In 1984, he developed the first direct genome sequencing method resulted in the first genome sequence. He helped initiate the human genome project in 1984 and the personal genome project in 2005. George, its just a delight tab with us. After george, debora spar will share her reflections on what shes heard and asked the first question for jamie and george to answer. Deborah is another superstar, the former president of Barnard University shes president at Harvard Business school and senior associate dean of Harvard Business School Online read her new book work make merry love, how machines shape our human destiny will be released in august. After that, daniel kraft will then moderate our question and answer session based on questions raised by you on that think spot site. Anyone can pose a question and the ones that are up voted the most will rise to the top of thelist. We encourage you to pose questions and up folk questionsthroughout the session. Daniel, another star is a stanford and harvard trained scientist, inventor, entrepreneur and innovator. The chair of medicine for Singularity University and founder and chair of exponential medicine, a program that explores convergence, rapidly developing technologies and the potential inbiomedicine and healthcare. With that, what an incredible lineup. Start thinking about your questions, get them going. Im passing to jamie to kick us off. Thank you so much fred, its just an incredible honor for me to be here. You mentioned an allstar team. This is my dream team, i dont know if its lebron and whoever but if i could just imagine a team of choosing from everyone on earth fly would want to have joining me and in event like this, just share insights, it would just be the people on this call now so thank you to you fred, george, deborah and daniel and thank you also to are really great cohost, think spot Atlantic Council, Singularity University and my publisher sourcebooks who is, i dont know any authors that say i love my publisher but i happen to be one. And were all coming together at this crazy moment. I think were all feeling this sense of this, this sense of mourning because there are very real and meaningful people and things that are being lost here in new york city at the center of it. But theres a lot of pain thats going around. But i think were also feeling as fred said that theres a new world on so many levels thats being created. Trends that were already happening are accelerating and in just really profound and incredible ways and new communities are forming and its the day i think for everybody it feels like its hard to differentiate days because many things are happening. New types of collaborations are happening and i always tell people this is it like a snow day or a big storm where we waited out and this snow gets plowed and the sun comes out and then we go back. This is really a fundamental change in my view and how we live and in our history and the history of everything, not just our science but our communities, our society and really our world. And as fred said i have one leg in the world of National Security and geopolitics. A lot of people reference this year to 2001, the year of the 9 11 attacks but for me this feels more like a 1941 year where there was a huge battle ahead and it wasnt clear whether that battle was even going to be one but even in those early dark days of the war, there were people, leaders like fdr and churchill who came together and said we have to know what were fighting for and then we can organize around building that world. We may not have an fdr or a churchill right now in our political world, and something thats exciting about this moment is it feels like we are dividing up that task. We are all coming together and everybody is a little piece of fdr and were doing things that our governments and other times may have done but improvising support, providing hope and encouragement. Thats something thats really incredible because yes, we have a virus that is supercharged by globalization. Its getting around the world because there are so many humans and we are so mobile but the networks we are using to address this crisis are also moving at the speed of globalization and thats something thats incredible. Communities like this and many others, daniel is a hobbit for a whole medical community and everybody is forming and reforming communities that are looking at new ways to solve these kinds of problems and the scientific community. George is a central hub of that period of the economic cysts and others from around the world are coming together and saying how can we Work Together to solve this problem. And what were seeing is an intersection of the genetics revolution and all the tools of the genetics revolution and this crisis so let me say a few words about each of that. The first, the genetics revolution. Among the billions of species that live and have ever lived , our one species suddenly has this ability to read, write and hack the codes of life and its incredible and we think of it. Just one species and its almost a godlike power. These are the powers weve imagined our gods having through our recorded history and it suddenly are starting to have those powers but spiderman or spidermans uncle, with that power comes responsibility and there comes a responsibility to make sure that our most cherished ethics and values are guiding that most powerful technology and thats what my book and this whole conversation is about. So the gen x revolution is racing forward and i focus on three primary areas. One is in this transition from our world of generalized to precision and then predicted Healthcare Health and life. Humans, we are a map massive negative data set but we are not an infinite data set and that means it comes from a time when the sophistication of our tools matches and perhaps exceeds the sophistication and complexity of our biology so we are developing these incredible capabilities that are going to move us not just to treating people individually based on their biology on knowing a lot about people either from their moment just after birth or even before birth and thats going to change the way we think about healthcare but not just healthcare. Right now we think about genetics and we tend to think about itin the context of healthcare because thats our primary interaction. We dont have a disease genome, we dont have a healthcare genome, we have a human genome so our genes are the blueprint for what we have, at least the potential, the range of possibility so were going to be experiencing addicts outside of the realm of healthcare which is already happening through consumer genetics is going to get much bigger and its going to touch cover more challenging issues like identity. Like parenting and then perhaps the most profound application or among the most profound will be how these technologies change not just the way we make babies and will shift towards more adoption of ivf and embryo screening and deborahs amazing book is coming out in august talking about this but also it will change ultimately and over time the nature of the babies we make quick. Since the hardcover version packing darwin came out last april i had a preliminary reference to the first babies were born. But since then we know there are at least three of these babies, there could be more. We just dont know. Then after that experience the World Health Organization created its International Advisory committee. I was honored to be chosen as one of the 18 members of that commission. We are working extremely hard to try to suggest what might be a framework. Think about how we can apply these very powerful technologies in ways that maximize benefits and minimize harms and im honored other members of the commission are here in this meeting. I was honored to be invited to go and speak at the vatican about these issues. We are also people from the vatican who are participating. My view is this is about the future of our species and we need a table thats big enough for everybody, from religious conservatives of various backgrounds, diy bio hackers, were all human and were all in this together. These technologies, this trend is intersecting with the coronavirus crisis. Weve had these kinds of pandemics in the past. Weve never been able to sequence in two weeks. Weve never had lets get that digital readout of the code and understand the virus that were facing. We have never had computer models that could allow us to test different responses. Weve never been able to develop testing as quick despite the monumental screwup here in this country, weve never been able to develop diagnostic tests as quickly. Now with the rapid sequencing, the kind of sequencing that george indicated we are able to see, watch this viral genome mutate as a spread around the world. George and robert green to us by friend whos also on this call are working to bring together the bio banks around the world to say, to try to figure out our other patterns, genetic pattes we can use to understand what kind of people may be prone, may have increased resistance to this kind of viral infection, or may do a kinds of are at greater risk and we could make smart decisions that once we had the kind of knowledge developing vaccines. There are people who are saying made we can do it in a year. Maybe some are saying two years. I was talking with a very senior very smart scientist in los angeles just the other day who has been working on this for a long time and said he didnt know if we could ever achieve Georges Georges on this call and george is a scientist of the possible so i will ask him what he thinks. And then developing surveillance systems, not just for this pathogen but other pathogens. All these tools are essential tools and we wouldnt have been but for the incredible science that we have. This cites comes with very, very significant ethical challenges. Like every technology it could be abused and so the onus is on us to try to figure out how to optimize the benefits and minimize the harm. That will be hard enough if we were living in some kind of at mistretta world where we could just make the smartest decisions possible but we live in a world and i write about this in a book, is defined by politics, by the political context in which we live. Certainly we have seen that in the political failures, the failure of china especially in the first three weeks of this outbreak to get on top of this crisis. The failure of the United States to test, to adequate information that could be provided to the american people, the failure, i would say the failure of the World Health Organization but the failure of all of us over decades to build a World Health Organization that would resource and empower and has a mandate to do the job the problem every human on earth would want it to do. And then the site exists within the context of global power structure and big power competition between the United States, china and others. Everybody, certainly everybody in this meeting but i think everybody around the world is getting maybe and a way that we havent really gotten since sputnik, this understanding science is absolutely, its not just something for professors here its something for everybody. Everybody needs to understand the science. Not just so we can understand the world around us and make sense of things or begin to make sense of things but so that we can make smart decisions, so we can protect the people who we love. Thats the origin of hacking darwin. 23 years ago i was was working on the National Security council and my then boss and no good friend who is also on this call, richard clarke, he was telling everyone who would listen fighting all kinds of control fight say we have to focus on terrorism. But people say thats not important, thats just one little thing. Tragically when 9 11 happened is memo was on president bushs george w. Bush his desk. Dick always used to say that you really be effective where to look around the corners, try to see whats coming. That means this conversation definitely we have to get through this crisis but we have to say what other other big existential threats were facing . Its not just this virus, its not just coronavirus, not even deadly pathogens. Its a whole suite of things that pose potential harm and we are not organized to address them. In part because we organize ourselves around states and around the International Organizations that are funded and in many ways controlled by states and not empowered to do what needs to be done. What the book is trying to do is pull all of those pieces together in a package for everybody. Im a Science Fiction writer so wanted a science book to feel like its the story because this